We've been having a lovely weekend with our younger son and his fiancée who are dab hands at Instagram et al and much better at taking interesting photographs than I am. Above is a novel take on the moth trap, possibly being examined by aliens. Actually, I had a slightly different but almost as unexpected visitor to it this morning: a large roe deer which fortunately didn't trample the bulb or get caught up in the wire.
Our visitors asked me to transfer some of about ten Elephant Hawk moths on to suitably exotic backgrounds for a photoshoot and here are a couple I took. Hollyhocks do very well round here and go on flowering for months. They have just started, so good times are in store however wet the weather continues to be.
The moth trap remains busy and it was nice to find a little Short-cloaked moth on an eggbox, one of the UK's smallest macro moths and reminiscent of old engravings of women hurrying about on errands wearing cloaks and shawls. I also had my first Mother of Pearl of 2021, an iridescent species which will be here in huge numbers for the next couple of months.
Yesterday afternoon I went in search of the Peacock caterpillars which I found last week and illustrated here, but found only these sinister-looking skins, below, from their final change before they pupate. Thinking it might contain a cocoon, I also prised open a folded nettle leaf sealed with a silken web and gave an awful shock to the resident spider and her tiny babies. Sorry!
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